thinking outside the box and charity shop finds

Forgive the pun about thinking outside the box but that's just what I was doing on one of my charity shop trawls. I rarely find cigar boxes in these places but sometimes I pick up something that relates to my unorthodox musical taste. I spotted this horrendous looking electric guitar. A cheapo heavy metal styled jobby in day-glo yellow. Well the price was the factor in deciding whether to buy or not - £15. Totting up ebay values of the hardware alone told me it was worth at least £30 in parts. Two single coil and one humbucking pickups plus wiring to two pots, machine heads, strat style tailpiece and a half decent neck and a see-through plastic gig bag - how could I resist. I could just dismantle it for the parts and build them into CBGs but I'm thinking about cutting the body down to a big cigarbox shape, keeping the humbucker and pots. Repaint the neck and headstock in something more subdued and maybe cladding the chopped down body with some rusty tinplate and turning the nasty thing into something even nastier (but cool).

I seem to have strayed back into circuit bending territory and my charity shop finds included two electronic childrens toys that are great items for modifications. Even as they are they can be used to make some interesting loops on my Akai Headrush. If you don't know anything about circuit bending, just type it into Youtube and have a look. I thought I was weird but some of these guys making this stuff are positivley mental!

What I did find that really excited me this week was a site I found that is related to circuit bending. It's a small collective of very clever guys who make stunning pieces of synth type equipment. They are sheer works of art as they stand, housed in lovely old cases with lots of copper plates, big old knobs, lights etc and they make some really cool sounds. Have a look at their site and see what I mean. http://www.folktek.com/